Quarantine

IT IS precisely people with views such as Charley Reese's who have made the AIDS health crisis a civil-liberties crisis as well. A sick mind is more difficult to confront than a sick body. His views on AIDS are enough to qualify him for quarantine and isolation to a colony with some like-minded folks at Arcadia.Donald G. CochranOCALA

Resident at Titusville Towers, an assisted living facility in Brevard County, are under quarantine after a suspected outbreak of the norovirus, WESH-Channel 2 is reporting. The Brevard County Health Department is tracking approximately 10 cases among the 90 residents in the senior-citizen community, the news station reported. Norovirus symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea. The disease is rarely fatal and typically lasts around 48 hours. To read the full story, see WESH.com .

TICK FEVER. Cattle ranchers, businessmen and officials from Orlando and surrounding counties joined to reinstate a tick fever quarantine. They called for the quarantine after unfavorable weather conditions caused a rise in cattle tick infections and a decline in the grade of dairy cows.1932: FALSE ALARMSFIREFIGHTERS FOOLED. Three members of the Orlando Fire Department were charged with making a false fire alarm on South Bumby Street after Orlando police caught them in a car chase. The men were found guilty and Judge Lyman Beckes ordered them to pay $50 each in lieu of 30 days in jail.

Two Volusia County pit bulls were taken to the Halifax Humane Society after attacking three people Friday morning, WKMG-Channel 6 is reporting. The first victim suffered severe bites to his lower legs just before 5:30 a.m. Minutes later the dog attacked a second man was bitten on his arms and legs and 30 minutes after that, a third man was admitted to a local hospital with multiple bites, the news station reported. A hearing will be scheduled to determine if the dogs should be deemed dangerous and euthanized.

The Baltimore home of the Preakness is eerily quiet this week, the result of a quarantine that has raised questions whether troubled Pimlico Race Course can regroup in time to host the middle jewel of the Triple Crown. An outbreak of equine herpesvirus at the 136-year-old track forced three horses to be euthanized and led several states to ban the shipment of horses into or from Maryland. Although a horse was linked to the virus Tuesday at nearby Laurel Park, there have been no new cases at Pimlico since Jan. 19 and the track intends to lift the self-imposed quarantine Feb. 8. But can Pimlico ultimately replace the cautionary yellow tape currently surrounding several barns with the bright yellow Black-eyed Susans that symbolize the Preakness?

County officials have lifted a rabies quarantine imposed in February.Dr. George Gant, Osceola County public health director, ordered the quarantine Feb. 28 after animal control officers captured a rabid skunk.During the quarantine, placed on a 1 1/2 square mile area of St. Cloud, officers trapped 20 stray dogs and cats and 10 wild animals including raccoons, skunks and oppossoms. The quarantine was lifted after tests showed none of the animals were rabid.

Agriculture officials today are expected to release the Zellwood section of Orange County from a quarantine on fruit shipments imposed earlier this year after the discovery of Mediterranean fruit flies. Crop-damaging Medflies were found in May in Hillsborough County but spread to four other counties, including northwest Orange, before being brought under control by a combination of pesticide spraying and the release of sterile fruit flies. Parts of Hillsborough are expected to remain under quarantine for several more months.

Agriculture officials enacted a 34-square-mile quarantine Wednesday near MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa to prevent the spread of the Oriental fruit fly. Residents of the area were asked to keep on observing a request made last week not to move backyard fruit or vegetables from their property. Connie Riher said a total of seven flies had been found to date - with no new flies detected Wednesday.

A rabies outbreak has prompted Osceola County Health Department officials to order a quarantine for a rural Osceola County area this week.The area around a 1 1/2-square-mile radius of the Neptune and Partin Settlement roads intersection has been quarantined because a rabid raccoon was found there Tuesday.Environmental Health Director Frank Wolf said he ordered the quarantine because another rabid raccoon was found in nearby Regal Oaks Shores in February.County animal control officers will patrol the area, and any stray animal will be impounded.

A federal quarantine imposed a month ago in Florida and 12 other states to stop the spread of destructive honeybee mites was lifted Friday because it had proved to be unworkable.Beekeepers who complained that the quarantine was too restrictive applauded the reversal by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.''I was really surprised, but I think it's probably the right decision under the circumstances,'' said Frank Randall, a Lake County beekeeper and president of the Florida Beekeepers Association.

A popular horse show in Ocala is under quarantine after six cases of equine herpesvirus were linked to the Marion County showground. The Florida Department of Agriculture said last week that a quarantine had been issued for the entire venue hosting the Horse Shows in the Sun event, which draws 3,500 horses and their trainers to Ocala each year. The department has also quarantined areas from which horses exposed to the virus had traveled, including about a dozen farms across the state.

MERRITT ISLAND, Florida — A pet monkey has been quarantined in its owner's Central Florida home after biting a man. Officials say the 19-year-old capuchin monkey named Mookie will be quarantined for 30 days to be sure that he doesn't show any symptoms of rabies . Brevard County Animal Services Capt. Bob Brown tells Florida Today that Mookie and its owner, Brad Berman, were approached Saturday on Merritt Island by a couple who wanted to pet the animal. Brown says a car pulling into the parking lot startled the monkey, which bit the 32-year-old man on the shin.

The emerald ash borer, an imported pest that kills ash trees, has not been located anywhere else in the state outside the four towns in New Haven County where it was discovered in mid-July, the state's chief insect scientist said Friday. A survey is planned this fall by state and federal forest and insect experts to try to determine the extent of the infestation of the bright green insect native to Asia. The borer, about the size of a grain of rice, kills ash trees by destroying the inner layers that carry sap to limbs and leaves, State Entomologist Kirby Stafford said.

A quarantine on the movement of ash trees, firewood containing ashwood and ashwood products will take effect Thursday throughout New Haven County , with the goal of slowing the spread of a tree-killing insect discovered last month in four towns, state officials said at a hearing Wednesday night. The meeting, held in the firehouse here — one of four towns where the emerald ash borer was discovered in mid-July — gave state officials, forestry workers and residents a chance to discuss the new regulations.

CHANGGANG, China - Few farmers in this southern Chinese village gave much thought to the epidemic that had begun spreading rapidly in the United States early this summer until the police sealed its 100 residents off from the outside world for about a week. It turned out that a visitor from California had shown symptoms of swine fluwhen he arrived for a funeral. Quarantines and medical detentions are among the aggressive measures that Chinese officials have taken to slow the transmission of the H1N1 virus.

Even as the swine-flu scare fades, Orlando International Airport and the rest of America's major airports are bracing for a potential disaster: a pandemic that requires them to quarantine international flights. Under plans developed by the Bush administration -- and now being re-evaluated by the Obama administration -- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set up standby quarantine/screening facilities at 19 airports to which all flights from affected countries would be diverted.

St. Cloud Manor, located seven miles east of St. Cloud, has been placed under quarantine after health officials found a third rabid raccoon in as many months.The Osceola County health department has placed under quarantine an area bordered by Mildred Bass, Canoe Creek, Alligator Lake and Chaplain roads.County animal control and health workers will monitor the area. Roaming dogs and cats will be captured and retained. Owners will be required to pay fees for vaccination, room and board, and a fine for violating the county's leash ordinance.

"Obama Orders Emergency Quarantine of Biden." -The Borowitz Report "This really is big, because [Arlen] Specter's move puts the Democrats within a hair's breath of an unfilibusterable 60-seat Senate majority. So now it appears the Senate's balance of power . . . is in the hands of Al Franken. What a country!" -Jon Stewart

BRADENTON -- The horse was sick, and nobody knew why. It stood weakly in a stable at the Rancho Alegre. It had lost weight. Its urine was reddish. Owner Pedro Cabrera was stumped. So in August, he took the quarter horse to Ocala, where a "suspicious organism" turned up on a microscope slide, state authorities say. When results came back from the laboratory, it became clear that the 7-year-old gelding suffered from equine piroplasmosis, a tick-borne disease that often is fatal. Officials from the state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services raced to Cabrera's farm that day. Observers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture arrived soon thereafter.